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From arachnids to zombies, these Halloween houses leave little to the imagination. Despite the fright, each was crafted with loving care.

7437 Christie Chapel Rd., Dublin

Beth Starrett has long been a Halloween fan, and she has 65 miniature Halloween villages in her home to prove it.

She and her husband, Joe, started adding the same spooky touch to the outside of their Dublin home as soon as they moved in a dozen years ago. The collection has grown to include a half-dozen tombstones, a zoo’s worth of animal skeletons, witches dangling from a tree and an occupied coffin.

New this year is a ladder shelf to display the 13 carved artificial pumpkins the couple has collected through the years. On Halloween night, with the help of the Starretts’ three children, ages 10 to 16, the artificial pumpkins will be joined by plenty of real jack-o’-lanterns.

“We’ve been ramping up outside for years now,” Joe said. “We try not to go too overboard, but it looks like we may have failed.”

7295 Candlestone Dr., Reynoldsburg

Tracy and Kelly Thomas have decorated their home for Halloween each of the past 14 years — except one.

“There was one year we didn’t do it because we went on vacation, and we never heard the end of it,” Kelly said.

“Our neighborhood definitely expects it,” she said. “We’ve had neighbors tell us the house helps them get their kids to eat dinner. They say, ‘If you finish your dinner, we can walk by the Halloween house.’ ”

Tracy makes most of the ghouls, tombstones and other decorations. He, Kelly and their oldest son, Riley, 14, all have their own tombstones. Last year, he had to make a new one when the couple’s other son, Corey, 8, realized he didn’t have one.

The gravestone words are courtesy of the family. For Kelly’s tombstone, Tracy came up with “Here lies Kelly, now she’s dead and smelly.”

Kelly got revenge with “Here lies Tracy Lee, on the electric fence he did pee.”

70 Bullitt Park Place, Bexley

Regular skeletons — even one hanging from a noose — aren’t quite enough for Glen LaFortune, so this year he melted some “flesh” onto a scarecrow skeleton, giving it a zombie look.

“Every year I try to introduce something new. This year was the scarecrow,” he said. “I’m going to take that look and give the other skeletons a similar corpse look next year. We like the whole zombie thing.”

“Having me and my son all dressed up, with the strobes hitting the fog — it’s very disorienting,” LaFortune said. “Some of the kids are really afraid.”

One of them is LaFortune’s 2-year-old daughter, Becca, who seeks comfort from mom Joanna.

“My daughter’s kind of not there yet,” Dad said.

1149 Clement Dr., Columbus

The outside of Bianca and Ray Baumgartner’s house is scary enough, but the real action is inside the house and garage.

“This year, we built a prison door for a zombie in the garage,” Bianca said. “We also have an electric chair with someone getting electrocuted, a guillotine and a bunch of other stuff.”

Last year, the couple and their two teenage sons decided even the garage wasn’t enough. They dressed in costumes and opened their decorated house to trick-or-treaters — at least to those brave enough.

“We give candy outside to the ones too afraid to come in,” Bianca said. “Mostly those are the little ones, but I’ve had teenagers who won’t come in and we’ve had grown men who’ve run out. One man left his child in the garage.”

The Baumgartners plan to keep ramping up their display.

“If I can scare someone and make them scream, I figure it’s a job well done,” Bianca noted.

7292 Kemperwood Court, Blacklick

In front of Shannon and Jeff Shope’s home are a zombie pirate, zombie bride and zombie Elvis. Then there’s the dead man in a coffin on the door and a corpse wrapped in a spider’s web hanging from the porch.

On Halloween night, those corpses are joined by a half-dozen or so live zombies that turn the Shopes’ yard into Night of the Living Dead.

“We’ll have live monsters. Our family and friends put on costumes and roam the yard,” Shannon said. “It’s a big thing to have them over and feed them and get them into their costumes.”

As neighbor kids get older, they get braver about running such a ghoulish gantlet.

“They tell me, ‘This year, I’m going to make it all the way to the front door,’ ” Shannon said.

Shannon hand-delivers the goodies to the others.

“If I see a small kid who crossed the street to avoid our house, I’ll run a treat bag over.”

135 Aspen Dr., Marysville

Trick-or-treaters could miss it, but their parents might catch a sly reference to the TV show The Walking Dead at Brian and Janae Mulvaine’s Marysville house.

“One of the guys on the show had these zombie heads in an aquarium,” said Brian, explaining the three severed heads that greet visitors from a glass tank at the base of the Mulvaines’ front steps.

“Of course, in the show they are alive.”

Younger kids too scared to advance can dip into a treat bucket at the bottom of the steps. But those who brave the steps and the moving robotic zombies and body parts on the deck are rewarded with full-size candy bars.

The Mulvaines have no plans to ratchet back the fright.

Brian’s goal: to have visitors call 911 in horror because the scene is so lifelike.

Better make that deathlike.

3107 Ellis Place, Columbus

Randy Bowman’s border collie, Gary, knows when it’s Halloween season.

That’s when strangers stop in front of his Westgate house to stare.

“My dog is in a heightened state of alert,” Bowman said. “He’ll sit at the front window and think, ‘Oh, here comes another visitor.’ ”

Among the tombstones, skeletons, spiders and witches, visitors have plenty to take in.

New this year is a 7-foot-high pumpkin-head scarecrow modeled off a figure in the 1999 film Sleepy Hollow.

“It was the opening scene of the film; the camera pans up to a mansion with that scarecrow,” Bowman said. “I carved that fake pumpkin as close as I could to that one.”

He has been decorating the home since he and his partner, John, moved in a decade ago.

“It’s just fun, a fun holiday, and makes me feel like a kid,” Bowman said. “It’s always been one of my favorite holidays.”